News Round Up: MoP Tabard Preview, Character Transfer Sale, PTR Soon

The latest beta patch introduced all the tabards for the Mists of Pandaria factions--they blow tabard designs from past expansions out of the water. Unlike past expansions, tabards will not be the first thing players buy at Friendly for reputation gains. Instead, they will be vanity rewards only available at Exalted, just like tabards in Burning Crusade.

As for the news round up, there's a 25% sale on character transfers this weekend, as well as more info on the world premiere of the Mists of Pandaria opening cinematic. There's also a ton of raid testing coming up, starting with Grand Empress Shek'zeer and Feng the Accursed today. We've got all the Dungeon Journals up as well as the boss loot tables!

Recent blue posts have focused heavily on pet battles, with an FAQ and list of current vanity pets that are turning into rare battle pets. There's also been a lot of analysis on WoW's content changing through the years and what Blizzard's intentions are for Mists. And Ghostcrawler's class posts continue, with an emphasis on Death Knights and Hunters this time, as well as a fun parallel between Warriors and Diablo Barbarians.

Finally, last but not least, the PTR will be open very soon and we have the Patch 5.0.4 Notes up. The world event leading up to Mists of Pandaria will be the Assault on Theramore, led by Garrosh. Looks like Theramore Tabard will be the reward, with Theramore's Fall/Theramore's Fall as achievements.

Weekend Sale: 25% Off Character Transfer

Blizzard

New horizons await! Through this weekend and for a limited time only, you can initiate a Character Transfer to move one of your World of Warcraft characters to a new realm for 25% off the regular price.

To get started, simply click here. Alternatively, you can log in to your Battle.net account at www.battle.net, select your World of Warcraft account, and then click “Character Transfer” at the bottom of the page.

Don’t delay -- this offer ends Monday, July 23 at 11:59 p.m. PDT.

Click the cut for all the blue posts!

PTR Patch 5.0.4 Notes

Kaivax

Welcome to the World of Warcraft Patch 5.0.4 Public Test Realm. We thank you for testing Patch 5.0.4 with us, and ask that you participate in our PTR Feedback forum and our PTR Bug Report forum.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Please note that PTR testing is restricted to World of Warcraft game accounts that do not have access to the Mists of Pandaria beta test. You can find more information on this here.

General

Account-wide Achievements, pets, and mounts

In Patch 5.0.4 and beyond, the majority of your character's Achievements, pets, and mounts will be shared with your other characters. Please read: Bringing Achievements to the Account Level, by Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street

World Event: Attack on Theramore Isle

Warchief Garrosh, obsessed with assuring the Horde’s supremacy over Kalimdor, launches an all-out attack against Jaina's island home of Theramore. Though valiant Alliance defenders rush to repel the sudden onslaught, they’ll soon find themselves unprepared for the terrible scope of Garrosh's true plans…

In the Public Test Realm, we will be testing this event at specified intervals. Keep an eye on our PTR Feedback forum for more details as they become available.

AOE Looting

Area of effect looting comes to World of Warcraft with this patch. After killing a group of enemies in close proximity, when you loot one of their corpses, the loot window will include items from all of the nearby corpses for which you have loot rights.

Enchants that modify the gear in your head slot have been removed from the game. This includes older head enchants of every type.

Relics, ranged, and thrown items

The slot in which ranged, relics, and thrown items were previously equipped has been removed. All weapons should now be equipped in the weapon slot.

Ranged weapons, including wands, have been adjusted to be more powerful.

Ranged weapons no longer have a minimum range.

Professions

The glyph system has been updated. Many class glyphs have been added, altered, or moved to different glyph types.

Prime glyphs have been removed.

User Interface

There is a new user interface for your mounts and pets.

Character creation screens have been updated.

Buffs have been consolidated in the UI.

New roll results frame added. This new feature can be accessed by clicking the word "[Loot]" in chat, or by typing "/loot".

The PvE queue frames have been unified. You can now queue for dungeons, raids, and other queue-able content in one handy place.

Vendors now offer item filtering.

Spellbooks have been updated to reflect changes to core abilities, and now include a brief overview of specializations.

The Dungeon Journal has been expanded with information on all pre-Cataclysm encounters.

A new help system has been added to many frames. You can toggle this on and off by clicking the "i" button in the upper left corner of the frame.

Mists of Pandaria Opening Cinematic World Premiere

Blizzard

Don’t miss the world premiere of the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria opening cinematic at gamescom 2012! The latest creation from Blizzard’s cinematics team will be shown in both English and German on giant screens at our booth in Halle 6.1 (B21).

The opening cinematic will debut at 14:00 on Thursday, August 16, the first fully public day of gamescom. This much-anticipated unveiling will be accompanied by a performance from MANAO - Drums of China – the all-female Chinese drumming group that opened and closed the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. A signing session with Blizzard developers will immediately follow the premiere.

Remember that from August 15-19, our booth will also be showcasing World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, and Diablo III, as well as our famous dance and costume contests, and many other activities.

Visit our Activities page for details, and be sure to check back here soon for more on what we have in store for you at gamescom!

Raid Testing: July 20-23

Watcher

Over the next few days, we will be testing a number of raid encounters.

Each encounter should be available at approximately the listed times below for all Beta Test Realms, regardless of suggested geographical region.

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a beta environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session or cancel it entirely, due to bugs, builds, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

Challenge Mode Feedback

Watcher

Casting single-target resurrection spells to recover from an intentional wipe takes quite a while when you're aiming for a new best time, such that doing so to clear debuffs like Sated is unlikely to be a net gain. As for suiciding to skip mob packs, the intent is for the "Enemies" counter for a given challenge mode to force you to engage most of the enemies in your path. Skipping patrols and sneaking past things using clever tactics is fine, but if you use a suicide or mass-stealth approach to bypass content, you should come up short on the counter.

Philosophically, we want to try to permit the use of all player abilities in challenge modes. The restriction on is different, because guild perks were always intended to be conveniences and not competitive advantages; in a challenge mode where time is everything, however, saving up to 40 seconds on wipe recovery was a clear advantage.

Pet Battle FAQ

Mumper

We are super excited to have pet battles live on the beta servers with the new patch today! Before you dive in, we wanted to give a bit of an update on exactly where we are and what you can expect.

First off, this is certainly a beta. Nothing you play is by any means final, try to keep that in mind. Overall though, the feature is mostly implemented and we need your feedback to help us polish it up! A few of the things you can try out in the beta:

Fight pets around the world in solo, 2v2 and 3v3 battles

Capture pets in the world of varying quality and strength

Duel and queue for PvP battles against other players

Interact on an epic questline to defeat Master Pet Tamers across all of Azeroth

Use your pets across any character on your Battle.net account (Battle Pet achievements are account-wide)

Now, we also have a number of bugs and things that are just not finished. You are going to want to post about these things and that’s fine, but here are the ones that we want you to know about beforehand:

Pets are currently healing to full health after a battle. This is a known bug and we are hoping to hotfix it tonight.

Pre-existing pets have no stats. Any pets that you acquire new are fine. This is also a bug that we hope to hotfix tonight.

In certain cases, starting a pet battle with a creature in the world will report an error about the pet being currently in battle, or that the account is locked. Both of these are hopefully on the hotfix list for tonight.

Some pets will be missing abilites, ability FX or animations.

The questline is very much WIP. You can get started on it, but we are certainly still implementing it.

We are tuning the XP curve so any feedback on this is appreciated.

Spawn rates on pets in the world are WIP. Feedback on this is appreciated as well.

We have an issue where players are sometimes losing a battle slot. A relog should fix the problem. We are working on it.

I will update this post as we get more info.

And finally, an FAQ about how most of the basics in the system work.

Battle Pet Trainers

These NPCs teach players Battle Pet Training, granting the ability to fight and capture pets. The training comes with a pet heal/rez spell and the ability to track pets in the world. These trainers can be found in all the racial start zones as well as Orgrimmar and Stormwind. The guards in the capitals can direct you to them as well. Note that this training is account-wide, so you only need to learn it on one character.

Pet Battle Training requires level 5 and 100g.

Master Pet Tamers

These are NPCs for the battle pet questline. You can fight these characters in a pet battle for increased XP, achievements and rewards. Defeating the Grand Master on each continent will unlock daily quests (via an achievement) for all of the other Tamers on that same continent.

Account-Wide Pets

Pets are now account-wide. This means that any pet you have on one character will be shared with all of the others on your Battle.net account. Earn level 6 with Grunty on character A? Log in character B and that level 6 Grunty will be there waiting for you.

If you have multiple versions of the same pet on multiple characters on your account, they will be merged into one. We will place any extras in your bags or mail them to you if you are out of space.

Pet Journal

Players can have up to 500 total pets and up to 3 versions of the same pet.

Pets can be named, released, marked as favorite or put in a cage for trading/selling from the journal.

Source info shows you where to obtain a pet and small lore blurb about it.

Abilites loadouts for your pets are set in the journal. This becomes available on pets at level 10.

View stats on your pets. Stats include Health, Speed, Power and Quality.

Pet Quality

Pets that are captured in the world have varying levels of quality, just like an item would. The quality stat is randomly determined every time a pet spawns. Higher quality pets get a larger stat allotment each time you level. Be on the lookout for Rares!

Pets on the AH

Most pets can be bought and sold from the AH. A new section is on the AH specifically for this.

Pets that are sold on the AH retain their stats and levels. Pets that can't be traded will display a warning in their info text as well as having the “Put in Cage” option disabled.

Battles

PvE battles take place in two ways: against NPC trainers and against pets that you can fight in the world. Pet tracking will let you find pets in the world that you can fight and capture. Keep an eye out!

PvP battles also have two varieties. You can choose to duel another player or you can queue up and be matched against another player of similar skill. Note that you do not earn XP for duels.

Pets heal a portion of their health after every fight. The amount healed is 50% of the damage that they took during the fight. You can also full heal all of the pets in your journal with the Revive Battle Pets spell (10m cooldown)

If one of your pets die in battle you can resurrect it using the Revive Battle Pets spell (10m cooldown) or just find a friendly, neighborhood Stable Master

Capturing

Pets are caught via PvE battles in the world. Any pet you can fight, you can catch. In order to catch a pet, you need to get it to low health and use your trap ability. Traps upgrade via specific achievements, improving your chance to catch higher level pets.

You can catch up to three of the same type of pet.

Thanks for trying out the feature and make sure to post your feedback here in the forum!

Rare-Quality Battle Pets

Draztal

We made the call to convert a number of non-capture pets into rare quality pets. We made this decision for a couple reasons. First off, we know that many folks are going to want to use some of their current pets in pet battles. We don't want players to feel like these pets are weaker than the others. At the same time, we don't want to make every single non-capture pet into a rare.

We decided which pets to change based on how difficult they are to obtain. This approach makes sense since it means that more time was put into getting these particular pets than other ones. This fits in with how you obtain a rare through the pet battle system; more time to seek out pets and fight them, hoping for a rare.

We know that we are not going to be able to please everyone, but this list is just a start and I'm sure we will make many updates between now and launch. Look it over and feel free to leave us your feedback. Thanks!

BoA Vanity Items

Takralus

I'm not an artist so I can't be completely certain, but when it comes to the Carved Ogre Idol it could be due to clipping and size issues. I'll try to find out more.

In regards to sharing pets and other rare objects, to my mind it's a little similar to the transmogrification of legendaries argument. Some of these things are damn hard to get, so when you see one in use, it's special. If suddenly these rare items were appearing a lot more often, they'd lose some of their awe quality. Don't you think it would be a shame if suddenly these relatively rare things became quite common to see?

Questing in MoP

Vaneras

As things are right now, it looks like there will be approximately 1300 quests in Mists of Pandaria. This is a very rough number though, and this is of course still subject to change.

There is some overlap between Alliance and Horde, but the majority of these quests are neutral and because of this we do not expect there to be more than 200 or so faction-specific quests.

Of these 1300 quests, roughly 300 of them are dailies.

Right this moment we don't have the numbers off-hand to show how that that compares exactly to the previous expansions, but the quest count seems to more closely mirror Wrath of the Lich King, however with a much greater emphasis on dailies. Mists of Pandaria is actually the expansion where we have emphasized dailies the most... ever!

The dailies are of course randomized, which means that you will never log in and find that you have 300 daily quests to do. We expect that if a player has progressed sufficiently with the neutral factions, and thus advanced to their maximum possible quest availability, you would have around 48 quests available on any given day.

Online Harassment

Crithto

Ashtón, thank you for posting your thoughts about how to increase positivity in a community driven environment. There are indeed countless ways to be far more constructive when responding to other players and your highlighted example is fantastic (though I had to remove the inappropriate language).

When you boil it down, we’re all the same. Who sits in front of the keyboard doesn’t matter; you have the same passion as the next player: You love to play World of Warcraft! Scrub away the frivolous things and you now have a foundation for a mindset that will assuredly promote and foster a fun, interactive, and positive gaming experience. We were all beginners at one point. We all had to learn how to play through discovery, trial and error, and most importantly, through the advice shared by others we played with.

Speaking to a friend of mine the other day, I was paid one of the kindest compliments I’ve received in a long while. She said to me, “You give such great advice, I love talking to you.” I can’t honestly say that any of my advice is all that great, but her words meant a lot to me. And apparently, my words to her mean a lot, too. It’s a trade and through simple acts of sharing advice and thoughts based upon our own experiences, we’re able to make someone feel valuable, cared for, and important. The question now becomes, why wouldn’t you want to make someone’s day by being helpful or encouraging?

It is certainly important that we provide everyone with the necessary tools to handle in-game concerns such as inappropriate language and harassment, that’s a given. But it has been and will always be up to us as players to walk-the-talk of building and maintaining a positive community. Not to be too corny, but it’s like the film, Pay It Forward. Get enough people doing little things to be helpful and positive, and voila! Let the domino effect commence.

Sometimes it’s good to discuss the merits of what can encourage or diminish a community and I’m glad you guys have remained civil about it. In terms of responsibility, internet anonymity is merely a crutch for those who choose to behave poorly towards others. Ultimately, we all have the choice to make our own decisions of whether to be friendly or mean -- react in a positive or negative manner.

Growing up, my father used to have a saying, “What did you do to make them think you did it?” I’ll admit, I was (and still am, frankly) the class clown. Though I never really crossed any major lines, I would still get in trouble. One time, though, a classmate of mine shot a spit-wad at the teacher while she had her back turned at the blackboard. She spun around and yelled at the class, “Who did that!?” Being the kind of boy who giggled at childish things, I did my best to hold it in subsequently blushing to a bright, rosy hue. I was busted! I didn’t do anything and yet was handed a parent-teacher conference notice that had to be signed and later attended by my mother. Oh boy, when my dad got home and started yelling at me, I pleaded explaining it wasn’t me but the other guy. He turned to me after a moment of silence and uttered his famous saying. “What did you do to make them think you did it?”

Each of us is responsible for what we do, what we say, and how we react. Yes, there may be some who don’t have the capacity to control certain things, but generally speaking, we each have a choice. Look, we’re all human -- at least I hope we are; there’s this one guy in the office… never mind -- and making mistakes is a part of being human. Don’t be too harsh with those who make a mistake, and don’t let the mean people get you down! You then get to rise up and gaze into a mirror knowing you’re better than all that.

Nakatoir

Every week this summer, we’re challenging you to get together with a few friends to explore a part of Azeroth that you may not have seen in a while, or perform a feat that you may have never done. They're World of Warcraft Summer Challenges, and we’re going to be playing along with you as we hunt down rare achievements, get screenshots of amazing bosses, and try to find some awesome gear for our transmogrification sets.

This week’s challenge is: Naxxramas.

Years ago, the crypt lord Anub'arak led an army of undead warriors into the ancient nerubian ziggurat now known as Naxxramas. The Scourge forces overran the citadel, and under the will of the Lich King its corridors were transformed into a potent war machine. Dark magic tore the fortress from its subterranean home and lifted it into the sky. Hidden behind a thick layer of clouds, Naxxramas grew in strength. At the Lich King's bidding, the burgeoning wrath within the necropolis was unleashed upon the world. Brave heroes breached the citadel and eventually overcame Naxxramas' vile commander, the lich Kel'Thuzad, but the victory was short-lived.

Consuming Content Too Fast

Draztal

Not at all, but if you want to argue something, there's got to be more flesh to it than "bring TBC back" or "because 1% of raiders seeing the last boss is good" or "because casual players don't deserve what we do".

And as I said a while ago, the only way to have a proper discussion is to actually see both sides of the coin. Some of the people posting here just refuse to even consider the fact that there's another side of the coin (or if they do, just to demean them).I don't believe you're wrong. But all those arguments have something in common: exclusivity. And that's fine. I mean, it's a valid point and it's feedback I can pass to the developers.However, at the end of the day, those posts still ignore what I've asked. Why is it such a big deal that other players, in a much longer amount of time, can get what you're getting now?

Why those players that can't devote as much time, or don't have as much skill as you, should be excluded of experiencing content?So you like challenge, but you wouldn't take the challenging route? I'm honestly missing something there, because otherwise the only possible conclusion is that in fact, you don't really like/enjoy that level of challenge, which doesn't seem to be, at all, the message you're trying to get through.Doesn't it make sense that, if you've been playing with the same people in these 7 years, you've actually got better at the game? The luxury of playing 7 years with the same players is that things like coordination actually happen as something "natural", and hurdles that are actual issues for other players, you can overcome much quicker.

Perhaps you don't even need to ask who's using a cooldown at a given moment because you already know who in the raid is going to take care of it. That on itself is something that many other raids don't have.Alright, let's put this in a different perspective to see if you (and other players) keep up with this argument about less time and effort being equally rewarded...

*This is a fictional example*Let's imagine that developers decided that, from now on, every Heroic boss of an expansion is only available until one guild, just one guild in the world, defeats it. The moment that happens, the Heroic mode of that boss is unavailable for everyone else until the next expansion is released.

In your own reasoning, it's only fair; they're putting way more time and effort than everyone else (hence why they'd be killing it first in the world). I'm sure there'll be people out there that'd scream "That is awesome!" at the idea of something like that.

In reality, what would happen, is that after 4-5-whatever amount of bosses they'd probably stop trying after realizing they just can't compete with that guild.

Would you be happy, in that context, with having to come one expansion later to kill those bosses when they're no longer relevant to your character? The answer is most likely: no.

However, that's exactly what has been suggested in this thread for those players that need the debuff to some degree to kill a boss much later than everyone else. They should basically contempt themselves with doing it when it's no longer relevant for them.

If the fictional case I've written before is not fair for you, doesn't that mean that what you're asking for is just as unfair? Think about it. Because both of them aim to the same: rewarding time and effort (just taken to the absolute extreme). And once you start arguing that *this time and effort* is okay, but this one is not, you're not being objective in your reasoning.

So, why do you want to force others to accept something you wouldn't in the first place? That is what you're asking for when you come up with this kind of arguments about why noone else should do something after you did it.I understand what is being said, and that's why I'm asking those questions. When some posters say that it's not fair that someone comes in with the 30% debuff and kills Heroic Madness with less time and effort, they're failing to acknowledge that some of those guilds might actually have been raiding since the patch was released (which is hardly less time and effort).

That's the kind of thing to which I want to see an objective argument as to why it's terrible that someone that is been pursuing that objective for more than half a year at this point, shouldn't get those same rewards.

Content Analysis

Takralus

4) There is no RvR. Tol Barad is just another BG, you get TP'd to it and it has a limited duration. The alliance/horde conflict, which is quite great through low levels zones, means nothing in end-game content. BGs are more like some kind of FPS, you're blue team or red team but you don't give a crap. Anyway, you can just switch factions for a few dollars.

The war between the Alliance and the Horde is also something we’re getting back to in Mists. For instance if the Horde were, say, planning something nasty for Theramore, the Alliance may want to do something about that. If I were you, I’d be sharpening my weapons. Things are about to heat up.

Actually, LFD and LFR have been very popular tools. When time is short, being able to queue for a quick dungeon while going about other things such as gathering or doing daily quests is very useful. Again, it’s not mandatory and you’re still able to manually form groups with friends, even cross-realm now.

In regards to the difficulty level of encounters, well we’re at the end of an expansion and most people have had ample time to gear up well past the entry level gear requirements for these instances, of course it’s going to seem easier now if you have people in the group with such high-end gear.

The old way of progression meant the majority of players never got to see the last boss in an expansion, and we wanted to change that. Not only is it counter-productive for us to put out these exciting, epic encounters that only a fraction of the players will ever see while they’re current, it also leaves many players with a feeling that they missed out on the end-game.

The system we have right now means that those who are at the cutting edge of raiding will still get to progress through all the raids in the order they become available, they’ll have the best gear before anyone else, and all the other fun things that come with being a hard core player. Anyone, like yourself, who skips content because perhaps they joined the game later or didn’t have the time required for this kind of progression doesn’t have to do all the encounters if they don’t want to — but the option is definitely still there if they want to see the story. It totally depends on how you want to play the game. This way, people aren’t forced to grind through non-current content (and often fail to make it to the end before the next expansion) to be able to see the end of the game.

Also, comparing two completely different types of games is bad, please don’t.

“Back in the old days”, if you played a Paladin, you were pretty much forced to heal in raids because other classes did DPS and Tanking better. Obviously lots of players were miffed about that sort of thing. We made changes over time to make other specs for each class more viable for not only raiding, but for other aspects of the game.

Having said that, the developers actively work hard to make sure we don’t see all classes ending up exactly the same, while trying to ensure different specs and classes are valuable in their own right, each having something to add to a group and making sure one character’s ability is not vastly more useful or overpowered than someone else’s.

I actually play low levels a lot because I enjoy levelling. Personally, I can honestly say that I regularly see low level players in greens and blues during instances, and I don't think I have ever seen someone picked on purely for not having heirlooms.

If everyone is getting on with the instance and there are no huge problems, surely it's unlikely others will start inspecting people and picking fault with their lack of looms?And I think you missed my point too — that there have always been players with better gear, having an 'advantage' over their opponents in that regard, heirlooms aren't the only way to have it.

If you go into a BG in greens, you can only expect to get your proverbial rear handed back to you on a plate if you go up against an equally skilled player in blues. Those who go out of their way to gear well for BGs and are skilled will generally do better than undergeared players of a similar skill, obviously. Before looms, players searched for good twink gear to give the same effect.Nope, I never made that out. As I said in my original post, low-level PvP is challenging due to several factors, and heirlooms are definitely one of them.

With the relatively easy availability of heirlooms as you highlighted, opposed to the item hunt for twinks, these days you have to going into low level BGs knowing that these people will be there. Just as you have to go into level 85 BGs in your crafted blue PvP set when you're just starting out, knowing there'll be organised teams on voice chat with the best Arena gear waiting for you.

Sure it's tough going up against this at first, but as you get better and gear up, the satisfaction you get when the tables start to turn is worth it IMO.

I'm not dismissing your feelings on this by the way, and please do continue putting your points forward. I'm just saying I think that this situation has always been there in some shape or form.What benefit would be available to people who prefer to play PvP? What could they have instead of the XP scroll, which to them would be useless?That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm offering another viewpoint, often my own personal one, as a player of WoW myself. It's unfortunate that, just because my text is blue, some people immediately dismiss my opinion as biased. Anyway, threads like this are often goldmines for some excellent feedback, providing some great points on how we might think about steering things for the better. I've seen several great arguments already.

Edit: On that note, if people can try to stay on the topics raised in the original post, we'd really appreciate it.Players that elected to turn off XP gain purely to excel in PvP were moved to their own BGs, yes. I don't think you can throw in players in heirlooms though. They level up alongside everyone else in the regular BGs, so they also have a point where they find themselves at the lower end of a bracket and perhaps aren't going to do so well against players of a higher level. I'm not saying they'll be trashed by people in greens, refer to my earlier comment about gearing up for BGs, but if they meet people in similar gear, they won't have an easy time.

Are you OK with the fact that new players, or old players in new servers, will have a permanent and significant gear disadvantage against heirloomed players? I will remind you that gear is a very important factor in how much you contribute to your team (and in consequence, the fun you have), perhaps even more than skill due to class imbalance.

But it's likely that, on average, the team you face will have a similar number of people in heirlooms, blues and/or greens isn't it? In which case, your team has an equal chance of winning regardless.Maybe "many players" is a bit of an overstatement. We all know the feeling of stepping into PvP for the first time and meeting a brick wall of opposition. It didn't stop people (me) from playing though. I think we tend to figure out that our opponents are more seasoned, better equipped players than we are, and to maybe put some research into improving first before throwing in the towel.

I'm fine with the existance of LFR and LFD, however, I'm not fine with the fact that you have more incentives to do those than to do the dungeons the old fashioned way.

At the very least you could make it so that if you give the time to run to the dungeon with a group of ppl you invited you would get the same reward in terms of valor, justice, gold and goodie bags as those who chose to use the tool to teleport into them.

The ones using the LFD tool would still have access to faster dungeons (since they have the random dungeon buff, as well as not needing to search for members) and those who wanted to do it the other way would still feel like they are not loosing up on rewards.

You don't need to make one better than the other in terms of rewards, just make them equal. (Although i wouldn't mind if you got an extra 10% valor/justice/gold if you went into a dungeon without using the LFD tool, not too much so it wouldn't feel mandatory)

Okay, good points, thanks for the feedback.

i agree about the loomies part . my opinion is that they shouldnt exist for pvp ; for pve there great , nothing wrong with ghetting through the content easier and faster . For pvp is a whole new case . New players are in disavantage and its not fair . Lets face it random rbgs are a whole lot more about personal satisfaction team play . No one has any satisfaction if you team wins but you get owned by the oposing team .

Alright, again, thanks for the continued constructive discussion :)Well hopefully you will feel less bored when Mists of Pandaria is out, because there is a heavy focus on PvP in this expansion... world-PvP in particular is getting some attention :-)

Also, the guards on PvP realms will be nerfed, which should hopefully serve as an encouragement as well.I get what the point is, and I acknowledge it. I am also perfectly aware that it is a point shared by several of you guys :-)

Also I am not telling anyone to buy anything if they do not want to, I'm telling people that we are trying to address PvP concerns in the new expansion we are working on. Once the expansion is released, some of the new PvP systems and content will be accessible to everyone regardless if they purchase the expansion or not, but it is no secret that you will need the expansion if you want access to all of the new content. This by the way is no different from how new systems and content have been introduced with previous expansions, and yet there are still plenty of people who play the game without some or even any of the expansions.

PvP vs Ganking

Takralus

Some great thoughts here :)

On the topic of ganking though, it's a tough one to handle. Many players join a PvP server so that they can seek out and inflict revenge on members of the opposite faction. You see players wishing for more world PvP like the old Southshore/Tarren Mill conflicts, and maybe some of the things you suggest would harm those kind of battles.

I'll play devil's advocate here (in my PvP server days I was always the victim rather than the ganker).

If buffs are sustained through death, that takes away some of the challenge of finding the person very quickly once they ress. Mind you, buffs can often be applied very quickly.

A debuff to prevent you from killing someone multiple times is a bit of a party pooper, and could potentially be abused — you'd have a hostile that was invulnerable for a limited time.

I think any PvP-kills-only debuffs/changes to timers could potentially add confusing layers of complexity to the game. Also, 'PvP-kills-only' could be possibly be avoided by waiting until a mob was attacking the gankee, then allowing the mob to get the killing blow.

You'd also have to make sure all these buffs/timers didn't apply to PvP zones like Wintergrasp and battlegrounds, and that players can't enter the zones with anything like that active.

The Need for Beta

Ghostcrawler

You do bring up some good points Theremin. It cannot be denied that there are a lot of spoilers being leaked into the community during a beta, and I can totally understand why that is very frustrating for those who prefer the new content to remain a secret until release, so that the experience of something new and the thrill of discovery is fully preserved. I am sure you are right that some people who do play the beta will not be as excited as they otherwise could have been upon release.

That being said, the benefits of the beta far outweigh the drawbacks, and here is why:

An internal test can never be a proper substitute for a beta, simply because of the fact that a beta resembles the live environment much more accurately.

In a beta, there are always players who play the game in ways that were never imagined by the developers, and there are always players who are so creative or so skilled that they can approach or defeat content in ways that were never expected. There is an incredibly huge variation in play styles amongst the beta players, and just by playing(or trying to play), they unearth many glitches and bugs that would never have been found by the dedicated team of internal testers tasked with hunting for glitches and bugs.

Having a huge pool of players in the beta will also help the developers determine if the new content they are working on actually works as intended or not, if the new content is fun or not.

Also, betas are much better at testing both hardware and connections, which helps immensely in the preparations for the launch and the live environment.

What I am trying to say is that having a beta test before release is a better way to ensure a high standard of quality.

Beta Class Balance Analysis

Ghostcrawler

General Question: Have there been any changes in DoT mechanics in Mists, compared with Cataclysm? More specifically, how additional ticks are added with additional haste, and how recasting a dot while it's already up (which currently allows the next tick of the current dot then starts the new dot from that point)?

Nothing has changed in this regard, other than the few rolling periodic type spells we mentioned earlier. However, the benefit of this functionality (being able to clip the last tick with no loss) has been extended to a few additional spells. These spells have been turned into periodics, despite not really doing anything periodically, so that you can take advantage of this same ability to clip the last couple seconds with no loss. , Haunt, , Envenom, and Savage Roar work this way. For example, Savage Roar uses a 3 sec periodic tick rate under the hood, so that if it normally lasts 18 sec, and you recast it after 17 sec, it will have 19sec remaining. Total of 36 sec for two casts of it, despite clipping it by 1 sec. We hope this is a nice little quality of life change (and should obviously have no downside).

Ghostcrawler

Currently this change doesn't work as I imagine it's intended because of a long standing bug involving Death Runes. When an ability that triggers is used the rune that is made into a Death Rune is based the cost of that ability, not the rune used to pay for it.

This is "mostly" fixed for a future build. I say "mostly," because there’s still one exception. It won’t work on runes that you couldn’t normally make Death runes by your spec (e.g., you made them Death Runes using or Plague Leech). This is because if you managed to convert your Blood runes to Death runes as a Blood DK, you’d end up able to use all 6 runes on Death Strike, endlessly. Similar issue with Unholy and .

The tooltips for and seem incorrect as well, and the reality damage values differ from the in-game tooltips in our spellbook. This is a very minor difference (talking about two-number digits), but a clarification would still be appreciated.

Fixed.

Scourge Strike's tooltip is incorrect. It states that it deals 18% additional Shadow damage per disease, but the reality in-game is that it deals 25% additional Shadow damage per disease (before any bonus through the Mastery: Dreadblade mastery). What version should we use for our simulations?

It's 25%. We can update the tooltip.

Changing the ghoul to have that behavior will make macroing Claw into all of our abilities mandatory, much the same way the macro was nearly mandatory. Why not just make Gnaw and Leap free?

Edit: Also, regarding Unholy's AoE rotation, is it intended for Unholy DKs to have orphaned Frost runes? Currently when we do our normal AoE rotation, we can Scourge Strike and ...but the left over Frost rune either goes unused or we use .

Would it be possible to have attached to ? Or have a cost change to 1 Blood/1 Frost rune, with a damage increase as well (100% more damage for Unholy?) Having to use to fill out our rotation does not feel like it is intended at all.

What is the formula for ? The datamined tooltip from Wowhead says 140% weapon damage + 10% of AP. The in-game tooltip suggests 140% weapon damage + 14% of AP. This second value seems closer to the reality, but it still doesn't really adds up to the numbers we're seeing when fighting. It seems to be very slightly higher in reality.

We’ve changed the formula for it to be 155% of weapon damage, but normalized (the fact that it wasn’t normalized before was a bug), in a future build.

, when used as Blood spec, is not refunding its rune if parried. I'm not sure about dodges or misses, or about (Frost) or Soul Reaper (Unholy).

Fixed for a future build. All versions of should refund its rune if it misses, consistently with other rune attacks.

The amount of downtime Blood dks have to deal with in beta, is way too much, and it isn't fun at all. In some setups it is almost double of that what it is on live.

We understand that Blood's rotation feels really different because of the 1 sec GCD. We're not sure yet what we want to do about that, if anything. The wrong solution, we feel, is to give Blood more buttons to hit, because fundamentally we like the rotation in terms of rune usage and decision points. We could give Blood a 1.5 GCD and Frost and Unholy a 1 sec GCD (or tie it to presence or something).

Another issue I'd like to bring up using these sims is that, Blood dks still feel like we are lacking behind dps wise (and threat, in terms of ST, compared to other tanks, pre execute phase.), especially in lower levels of gear.

We're not seeing that. At lower gear levels, monks and DK tank DPS is slightly high compared to paladin, warrior and druid. At higher gear levels, druid tanks are slightly high. That's all within the level that we can tweak by ship. If you have specific numbers, feel free to share them.

Currently unholy death knights are facing an issue regarding gnaw and leap in pvp. Unholy death knights are the only pet owning spec to have to toggle their pets resource in pvp. The ghouls main ability Claw currently drains the ghoul of all his energy making it impossible to case gnaw and leap because of their energy cost.

This is fixed for the build after next. The Ghoul will only autocast Claw it if it has at least 60 energy, so that it reserves enough for Gnaw and Leap.

Ghostcrawler, you probably have the best resources to do this: Can test Gargoyle with extreme levels of haste (100-200%?) just to see if he's getting GCD capped. If not it's an AI issue severely limiting his dps time.

It’s not a matter of getting GCD capped. Even with extreme levels of haste, he isn't capped. There’s some delay between his casts just because the AI can be slow about starting the next cast after one finishes; it doesn’t use spell queuing like players do. Regardless, the Gargoyle is tuned around this effect on his casting speed, and also tuned around him not benefitting from Mastery. Your Gargoyle being 3% of your total damage isn’t an issue to us; it’s a cooldown to help you stack extra damage during important moments, and it does that.

Ghost, I can't recall if you mentioned or wrote about this during the Cataclysm Beta (in which case, my apologies for asking again), but: Could you please explain the logic behind Death Knight diseases not benefitting from Haste?

In general, caster dots tick faster from haste but melee dots don't. We want the haste stat to let you "do more stuff." Haste already lets melee do more stuff because it brings them more resources, which in turn lets them do more stuff. DK runes regen faster with haste. Warriors earn more rage from more frequent auto-attacks. Ret paladins have the passive to let them also "do more stuff" with haste.

If we ever needed to make haste more beneficial for melee, we'd consider it, but that's the general logic.

Ghostcrawler

I'm still worried with the new change that Frenzied Regeneration will not be used as often as it once was before. I understand the 2500% of AP formula was a little overpowered but this new formula is only SLIGHTLY buffing what was previously supplied. My main problem is the fact that low level Frenzied Regeneration is just not providing that much healing when you compare it to your total health. At top end Heroic DS level gear, the heal will only provide ~10% of our total health. At heroic 90 dungeon level gear your looking at 10-12% of the total health. Even if you estimate 60,000 AP and 500k health, you are only looking at 13% of the total health. Is it your intent to have Frenzied Regeneration that low in comparison to the total health? I can see it being useful at 15% to 20% but 10 just seems low even in top-end current content.

We’re making another adjustment to this in a future build: It uses that formula, or 2.5x your Stamina, whichever is higher.

Ghostcrawler

On the subject of the effect formerly known as wild hunt, when I last tested this effect on beta (quite awhile ago at this point), it was doing 120% more damage for 100% more focus. This is consistent with how it works on live, although the tooltip stated (and still does) that it does 100% more damage for 120% more focus.

Actually, this was a bug. It had been intended to be a way to bleed off excess focus at a reduced efficiency (similar to for warriors). However, it was actually acting as a *more* efficient way to convert focus to damage, which was a bug. This unintended functionality has the downside that it encourages you to only use Claw above 50 focus, to maximize damage; autocast won’t do that, so you have to do it manually. So, after discussing this a bit, we see 3 viable solutions:

A) "Fix" the bug, making it less efficient above 50.B) Change autocast logic to only autocast above 50, and preserve the "more-efficient-above-50" functionality.C) Change it to simply be 2x damage for 2x cost.

Option A, while the originally intended functionality, would feel punitive at this point, so we’re leaning away from that. Option B might cause your pet to waste significant focus when she gets surges of focus, such as from or , and hits the focus cap. So, we’re leaning toward Option C, since there wasn’t really much engaging gameplay from this anyway, and this just allows it to be an overflow valve for excess focus.

BM hunters also have a similar issue with their pets outside of raids. Special attacks that require focus (i.e., , Froststorm Breath, Burrow Attack) never go off (unless you spec Fervor or have Rapid Fire up) because our pets are very focus starved. You have to manually turn off their basic attack (Smack/Bite/Claw) to cast those specials. Any chance of upping pet focus regen or removing/reducing (or pooling) focus cost for those specials?

We reduced the cost of those specials to 20 focus, so the autocast will use them. Having it pool focus on the basic attacks would be problematic as it would cross over the 50 focus limit where it does 100% more damage for 120% more focus.

I am curious as to what happened with the talent for Hunters.

That build was taken in the middle of making some changes to . Internally, it’s currently 3 s or Multi-Shots at -20 focus cost, but that’s looking too strong, so we might change it to 2, or even something else, by the time that change gets in a build to you.

Ghostcrawler

Hot Streak will increase Pyroblast’s damage by 25%, and Pyroblast’s normal damage has been reduced by 20% in a future build.Is Frost being a competitive PvE spec possible, or am I getting my hopes up a little too soon?

While I hate to say something like “No, really, we mean it this time!”, yes, we’re trying very hard this expansion to get Frost equally PvE viable with Arcane and Fire. We’re aiming for Arcane and Fire being as PvP viable as Frost is, too. We added the recent ramping mechanic because we were worried about Frost's damage being too good in both PvE and PvP.

Ghostcrawler

You're going to be see a lot of number tweaking from here on out. If you think any of the changes are off base, I'm afraid you're going to have to offer a little more evidence to support your claim, or else this forum is going to be reduced to "don't nerf me, bro" posts. :(

Ret was doing too much damage. Prot's damage is fine even with the change, and to answer a related question, that is assuming spending some Holy Power on .The ret paladin Charred Glyph also increases the cooldown by 5 seconds. The cooldown increase is not in the tooltip. Is this intended behavior?

Nope. Fixed for next build.

Ghostcrawler

I have only seen a few numbers in this thread, and they all dealt with Crusader Strike damage, which is a rather small part of paladin damage on the whole. Is the issue that you just like big Crusader Strikes? Our goal has been to deliver more of an impact with Avenger's Shield and Shield of the Righteous. If every attack hits for about the same amount, then attacks don't feel different.

If you have actual evidence that Protection paladin damage is lower than other tanks or lower than it is on live, please share it.

Ghostcrawler

Ghostcrawler

We are talking about reducing the cost of Healing Wave slightly to match Healing Surge (which is how the equivalents are for priests). This may mean that shaman can heal efficiently with Healing Surge (with Tidal Waves) but we think that might be fine for them. Healing Wave would still get use because sometimes the Healing Surge just isn't sufficient to keep someone alive. Healers also tend to migrate from their efficient heal to their big heal in later tiers, which we're fine with. It makes it feel like all those gear improvements are doing something.

Ghostcrawler

In this last build, has stoped regenerating when the pet is out of combat, is this an intended change?

No.

We aren’t able to debug your simulations, but will say that those very much do not reflect the numbers we’re seeing. We’re seeing Destruction slightly above Demonology (1-3% difference) on a single target, and Affliction slightly (3-5% difference) above Destruction. Those are gaps that we expect to tune tighter by ship. I’m not sure if your simulation of Affliction/Demonology is too high, or if your simulation of Destruction is too low, or if our results are off. Providing statistically significant logs of these performances would be very helpful.

Currently the Shivarra doesn't seem to actually do any off hand swings, but I'm assuming this is a known bug that will be fixed. More importantly, there seem to be weird things going on with the AP scaling of these dual-wielding pets. Both the Shivarra and the Wrathguard appear to get the exact same amount of AP per owner SP (2.9), which is odd given that the Succubus and the Felguard get such different amounts (1.67 and 3.5, respectively). Is this intended?

Also, is it intended that the dual-wielders have a different base weapon damage than all the other warlock pets?

All of these things are correct and intended (though coefficients like that may chance as our tuning progresses). The Shivarra will get her offhand swings in the beta build after next.

Ghostcrawler

So less like energy or mana and more like... combo points? :)

I'm not just being snarky. I think it's a legitimate point. If you have yellow attacks that produce X rage and then a finisher that consumes Y rage, then you have a system that works fundamentally a lot like combo points or Holy Power. Ultimately we know that system works, but I'm not sure that means that every class should use it. It's a little deflating when you switch characters only to discover that the resource mechanic feels almost the same.

I actually think we're pretty close on the rage design for Mists and that what some of you are reacting to isn't the mechanic as a whole but the current numbers on beta. By moving some rage generation to yellow attacks we have given warriors and bears more control over building up their resource rather than it being totally passive. By reducing some of the exponential scaling of the resource model with gear, we think we have broken the cycle of warriors who are weak at launch and overpowered by an expansion's end. Recently, we felt like rage generation was too high in starting gear, which wasn't giving warriors too much room to grow. We lowered it, but that ended up feeling too punishing at low level, so we're trying to strike a balance.

These aren't the kinds of decisions that can easily be mathed out, because so much of it comes down to the *feel* of combat, which we can only get a handle on by trying different designs and playing them ourselves, and asking other players (like you guys) to try them as well. Blizzard is famous, perhaps infamous, for design iteration. You sort of have to stand back and let us do our jobs here. We need to be able to adjust things in beta without the community freaking out every time a number goes down (and I'm not just talking to warriors here). I totally understand that beta design can feel like a roller coaster, which is one of the reasons we try to limit design churn after launch. It's totally fine -- and in fact we welcome it -- to provide feedback along the way. Helpful feedback is the sort of thing several warriors did when they said they felt like rage generation from white attacks was too low and rage generation during was too high. It's a little disappointing to read "rage generation feels low now, therefore the entire system must be scrapped." :(

I could wax philosophical about the similarities and differences between warrior rage and barbarian fury; indeed the strengths and weaknesses of various resource systems is something the WoW designers discuss frequently with the Diablo designers. Just remember that the combat situations are very different. D3 is about very short fights against huge groups of enemies when you are often alone or in a small group. Even if you have a tank, you don't really have a healer. Except for the boss fights, the fights are unscripted and unpredictable. I'm jealous of the combat situations the D3 designers can put you in, because there is room for a lot of different AE attacks and survival buttons and movement abilities. On the other hand, because the fights are short, there isn't a lot of opportunity for the rotations and situational abilities that the WoW classes have and I've always enjoyed the emphasis on the synergy of large groups of players in WoW (whether it's a raid or a BG or just a guild hanging out in chat). It's actually a little refreshing both as a player and a designer that they do feel so different (to me anyway).We’re making another adjustment to this in a future build: It uses that formula, or 2.5x your Stamina, whichever is higher.

I am quoting myself here, but this mechanic for Frenzied Regeneration also applies to to make sure the floor isn't too low. The 3000 s some of you are talking about would be more like 30,000 with this change. As I said earlier, we want those abilities to be good abilities, but we couldn't make them scale linearly with attack power without them being too good with bad gear or too bad with good gear.

Comment by Adamsm

Comment by Nerraw

Sexy tabards are sexy! The August Celestials tabard in particular is gonna look amazing on my paladin.

Comment by ElhonnaDS

on 2012-07-20T14:44:44-05:00

There are both balloon and kite models in this list, so it looks like some of the information floating around about which models will be excluded from pet battles is incorrect.

Comment by felhunter

on 2012-07-20T14:48:55-05:00

and cant wait for this MoP introduction patch, assault on theramore didnt see that coming as pre-event. though it would happen while we landed on pandaria or shortly after but not before.

Comment by Machineman

on 2012-07-20T14:53:13-05:00

That Angler's tabard cannot/better not be the final one. We already have an anchor, at least one!

Comment by Voltt

on 2012-07-20T14:55:53-05:00

If suddenly these rare items were appearing a lot more often, they'd lose some of their awe quality. Don't you think it would be a shame if suddenly these relatively rare things became quite common to see?

You mean like Tarecgosa and Fangs?

Comment by Adamsm

on 2012-07-20T15:11:05-05:00

and cant wait for this MoP introduction patch, assault on theramore didnt see that coming as pre-event. though it would happen while we landed on pandaria or shortly after but not before.

Since Jaina's book is finally coming out next month, not really surprised.

Comment by Azrile

on 2012-07-20T15:45:14-05:00

PTR is up!

Cannot stay logged in for more than a few minutes, and now there is a queue to get back in.. but it is at least up and running.

No battle pets training. You can see the new UI and stuff (obviously) but the pets trainers are not activated.

Comment by zandy1990

on 2012-07-20T15:47:48-05:00

The August Celestials Tabard is really beautiful and well designed. I think that one would be one of my favorite tabards to wear.

Comment by Adamsm

on 2012-07-20T15:54:30-05:00

No battle pets training. You can see the new UI and stuff (obviously) but the pets trainers are not activated.

Well yeah; Pet Battles are one of the expansion pieces heh.

Comment by Iceveiled

on 2012-07-20T16:34:28-05:00

Really diggin' the new tabards, can't wait to collect them all on my main. But FFS we need some sort of tabard storage. I have so many wasted bank slots to tabards and I refuse to get rid of any of them! I probably have around 30 tabards on my main taking up space in the bank. And I know some people with even more.

Comment by Azrile

on 2012-07-20T17:11:41-05:00

No battle pets training. You can see the new UI and stuff (obviously) but the pets trainers are not activated.

Well yeah; Pet Battles are one of the expansion pieces heh.

Yes and No. You will not have to buy MoP in order to do pet battles. Since it is getting turned on for everyone regardless of MOP purchase, there was a chance it would be part of the PTR.

Comment by ksredsoxfan88

on 2012-07-20T17:21:40-05:00

That Angler's tabard cannot/better not be the final one. We already have an anchor, at least one!

I think that they may have the Angler and the Theramore tabard switched.

Comment by Rainemard

on 2012-07-20T17:47:05-05:00

I hope the Anglers tabard is a placeholder. An anchor for a fishing faction when we really don't use boats to fish seems odd. Plus it's what the Theramore tabard currently appears as.

In regards to sharing pets and other rare objects, to my mind it's a little similar to the transmogrification of legendaries argument. Some of these things are damn hard to get, so when you see one in use, it's special. If suddenly these rare items were appearing a lot more often, they'd lose some of their awe quality. Don't you think it would be a shame if suddenly these relatively rare things became quite common to see?

Nope.

This is such a silly argument. The only people who would be upset are the same people who aren't going to play a Pandaren or a Monk when MoP comes out simply because everyone else will be doing it. It's not that they don't want transmoggable legendaries, it's that they don't want everyone else to be able to as well.

If I did the work to obtain a Legendary weapon, I should be able to show it off - via transmog, if the item is too outdated to use and remain effective. Even if I can't though, it's not all that hard to make a macro to equip the Legendary outside of battle. Ta-dah, my Legendary is practically a transmog already, trolling those players with a need to feel unique - preventing them from using theirs. Win/win!

Comment by Rankkor

on 2012-07-20T17:55:01-05:00

is it just me? or the Angler Tabard looks an awful lot like the Theramoore tabard? Same color, and same symbol, I have to agree with Azrile, I think you guys mixed the theramoore and the angler tabards.

Comment by perculia

on 2012-07-20T18:00:17-05:00

is it just me? or the Angler Tabard looks an awful lot like the Theramoore tabard? Same color, and same symbol, I have to agree with Azrile, I think you guys mixed the theramoore and the angler tabards.

It's possible that one or both of the tabards are placeholders right now. The Angler's Tabard was released earlier than the others, so maybe it didn't get the later unique artwork yet. We haven't mixed anything up though--what's in the MoP database is what's datamined from beta.

Comment by Rankkor

on 2012-07-20T18:10:00-05:00

then it must be a placeholder. I'm gonna be a tad dissapointed if that's the final version of the model, because that's exactly the same tabard used by theramoore troops.